#astrumregalis

His breathing was ragged and his hair out of sorts—something at other times, he was sure, Aella would find to be most enjoyable. For now, however, he was being regarded by her thoughtful stare. It was the look of a Queen regarding her King, measuring his mettle. Beneath the coolness, however, he spotted concern. It was enough to make the exhausted illusionist laugh, a self-deprecating sound.

“I'll be quite alright,” he told her. His lips curved upwards. “Though considering you are not by my side, examining each and every wound as you so often tend to do, I do think you know that.” His arms, sore from grappling and struggling close-quarters with some brute he no longer cared to remember the name of, rose and opened for her invitingly.

[Text: Unknown] …….

ZARINA LEFÈVRE

ooc;;

i haven't greeted you yet. i am sorry

“... Perhaps?”The answer came out as more of a question—as if he hadn't decided on the validity of his response. Laundry of various shapes and sizes laid before him in a disorganized heap. It seemed his attempts at domesticity had not been sailing as smoothly as he had hoped.

In a universe where everyone is born with numbers on their wrists counting down to when they’ll meet their soulmate, send me 00:00:00 for my muses reaction to their numbers hitting zero when they meet yours.

As much as Loki was unwilling to admit this—be it to himself or to others—he was as obsessed with the numbers on his wrist as anyone else was. For years he had put up the façade that he didn’t care for them and that those who did were just wasting their time and their lives away waiting for something that would eventually happen anyway. I mean, granted, there was that one woman whose soul mate died in battle or something and the numbers on her wrist vanished, replaced with blinking horizontal lines. That was a glitch in the system. Loki felt bad for her.

When nobody was around to notice, the God would steal glances to his wrist, gauging the exact amount of time he had until he would meet whomever his apparent soul mate was. Years, months, weeks, days, hours. How could people eagerly wait for this? It took ages. Such a waste of time in his eyes.

So he took to distracting himself, making sure those numbers were well covered by his sleeves. He was set on quests and to battles with his other companions and his brother, and whilst at home he’d bury himself in his studies and refuse to come out except to eat and sleep. People were worried, but not enough to make him stop what he was doing.

He didn’t look at the numbers until they were on one of their bigger quests, attempting to seek out some mischief mongers on one of the realms, and even then he only looked because while they rested around a fire that night, they all chose to ask one another how long they had. Some had years to wait, others only months, and very few had already met theirs. Loki was hesitant to lift up his sleeve and look at his own wrist, but the others prodded him on, so with a heavy sigh and some reluctance, he rolled his sleeve up and stopped. 00:00:00.

Nobody had seen the flashing zeros on Loki’s flesh, because it was then that they realized there were people behind them and this only became apparent because suddenly knives were pressed to their throats. Everything was tense, everyone was tense, and the one whose knife was digging into Loki’s neck had a wrist that read 00:00:00.